Whistleblowing is the activity of a person, often an employee, revealing information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whistleblowers can use a variety of internal or external channels to communicate information or allegations. Over 83% of whistleblowers report internally to a supervisor, human resources, compliance, or a neutral third party within the company, hoping that the company will address and correct the issues. A whistleblower can also bring allegations to light by communicating with external entities, such as the media, government, or law enforcement. Some countries legislate as to what constitutes a protected disclosure, and the permissible methods of presenting a disclosure. Whistleblowing can occur in the private sector or the public sector.
Jesselyn Radack is an American national security and human rights attorney known for her defense of whistleblowers, journalists, and hacktivists. She graduated from Brown University and Yale Law School and began her career as an Honors Program attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice.
The United States Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is a permanent independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency whose basic legislative authority comes from four federal statutes: the Civil Service Reform Act, the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Hatch Act, and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). OSC's primary mission is the safeguarding of the merit system in federal employment by protecting employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices (PPPs), especially reprisal for "whistleblowing." The agency also operates a secure channel for federal whistleblower disclosures of violations of law, rule, or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; abuse of authority; and substantial and specific danger to public health and safety. In addition, OSC issues advice on the Hatch Act and enforces its restrictions on partisan political activity by government employees. Finally, OSC protects the civilian employment and reemployment rights of military service members under USERRA. OSC has around 140 staff, and the Special Counsel is an ex officio member of Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), an association of inspectors general charged with the regulation of good governance within the federal government.
The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), founded in 2004 by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds in league with over 50 former and current United States government officials from more than a dozen agencies, is an independent, nonpartisan alliance of whistleblowers who have come forward to address weaknesses of US security agencies.
Mark S. Zaid is an American attorney, based in Washington, D.C., with a practice focused on national security law, freedom of speech constitutional claims, and government accountability.
Arthur Ernest "Ernie" Fitzgerald was an American engineer, a member of the Senior Executive Service in the United States Air Force, and a prominent U.S. government whistleblower.
Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto is a Washington, D.C.-based international whistleblower rights law firm specializing in anti-corruption and whistleblower law, representing whistleblowers who seek rewards, or who are facing employer retaliation, for reporting violations of the False Claims Act, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, Sarbanes-Oxley Acts, Commodity and Security Exchange Acts and the IRS Whistleblower law.
David Keith Colapinto is an attorney for Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, a Washington, D.C., US, law firm specializing in employment law.
The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(8)-(9), Pub.L. 101-12 as amended, is a United States federal law that protects federal whistleblowers who work for the government and report the possible existence of an activity constituting a violation of law, rules, or regulations, or mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority or a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety. A federal agency violates the Whistleblower Protection Act if agency authorities take retaliatory personnel action against any employee or applicant because of disclosure of information by that employee or applicant.
The Government Accountability Project (GAP) is a nonprofit whistleblower protection and advocacy organization in the United States. It was founded in 1977.
The National Whistleblower Center (NWC) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax exempt, educational and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1988 by the lawyers Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, LLP. As of June 2021, Siri Nelson is the executive director. Since its founding, the center has worked on whistleblower cases relating to environmental protection, nuclear safety, government and corporate accountability, and wildlife crime.
Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is an American former senior policy analyst for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Beginning in 1996, she filed complaints alleging that a company from the United States was mining vanadium in South Africa and harming the environment and human health. The EPA did not respond, and Coleman-Adebayo reported her concerns to other organizations. When the EPA subsequently did not promote Coleman-Adebayo at her request, she filed suit against the agency, alleging racial and gender discrimination. On August 18, 2000, a federal jury found EPA guilty of violating the civil rights of Coleman-Adebayo on the basis of race, sex, color and a hostile work environment, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Her experience inspired passage of the Notification and Federal Employee Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002.
Stephen Martin Kohn is an attorney for Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, a Washington, D.C., law firm specializing in employment law. The author of the first legal treatise on whistleblowing, Kohn is recognized as one of the top experts in whistleblower protection law. He also has written on the subject of political prisoners and the history of the abrogation of the rights of political protestors.
Michael D. Kohn is a founding partner of the Washington, D.C., law firm Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, where he specializes in whistleblower protection law.
The Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform (FAIR) was a Canadian public interest organization and registered charity whose purpose was to support legislation and management practices that protect whistleblowers.
Thad McIntosh Guyer is an American civil rights and whistleblower lawyer, lecturer and advisor with an international law practice based in Oregon. He is known for defending whistleblowers in retaliation cases at large institutions including the United Nations, World Bank, International Labour Organization and African Development Bank.
Daniel P. Meyer is an attorney admitted in the District of Columbia and is currently the Managing Partner of the Washington D.C. Office of Tully Rinckey, PLLC, an international law firm headquartered at Albany, New York, and co-founded by Mathew Tully and Greg Rinckey.
A whistleblower is a person who exposes any kind of information or activity that is deemed illegal, unethical, or not correct within an organization that is either private or public. The Whistleblower Protection Act was made into federal law in the United States in 1989.
Reuben A. Guttman, born 1959 in New York City, is an American attorney and a founding Partner of Guttman, Buschner & Brooks PLLC ("GBB"), a DC-based plaintiffs' firm His practice involves complex litigation and class actions. He has served as counsel in some of the largest recoveries under the False Claims Act. The International Business Times has called Guttman "one of the world's most prominent whistleblower attorneys," and he has been recognized as a Washingtonian Top Lawyer by Washingtonian Magazine.
War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State is a 66-minute documentary by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Foundation, released in 2013.
